The Thames from Hampton Court to Sunbury Lock

Tagg’s Island 2

the car factory

In 1941 the island was taken over by AC Cars, who converted the hotel grounds into a factory. They made fire fighting equipment, aircraft parts, radar vans, flame throwers, guns and sights, and built a Bailey bridge from the Middlesex bank in 1942, downstream of the present bridge.

 

Production continued on Tagg’s Island after the war, and by the 1960s AC Cars moved their tricycle Invacar invalid car production line to the island—which is pretty funny, given that the company is famous for high-performance sports cars: an AC Cobra doing 196 MPH on the M1 in 1963 is often quoted as the reason for introducing a 70 MPH speed limit on motorways.

 

Production of Invacars ended in 1976 when the government decided it made more sense to pay for ordinary production cars to be adapted for disabled users than to hand out slow, unsafe and inconvenient Invacars. I think their production line on the island must have ended about 10 years earlier.

 

 

death of the hotel—birth of a new community

Meanwhile the hotel again passed into the hands of yet more owners who couldn’t make money out of it.

 

It was bought by Mr J.R. Rennie in 1956 (or maybe March 1959). He had plans to replace the hotel with a block of flats and an indoor ‘fun palace’, but the plans were rejected by the council.

 

At some stage around 1961 there was a fire and the building never operated as a hotel again.

 

 

the hotel after fred karno

After Karno, the hotel was managed or owned by Beaumont Alexander, Managing Director of the New Princes’ Hotel &  Restaurant in Piccadilly, a famous music venue. It was renamed the Palm Beach and re-opened on 8 May 1926.

 

It was sold again to Herbert Cyril—real name Charles Pearce Brown, a former boxer, who had assisted in the management of the hotel since 1926, and opened on 22 June 1928. The name changed to the Thames Riviera Hotel. It had an ice rink open all year round, covered and lit tennis courts, “badminton, putting, boating and bathing from a sandy beach, and the D’Amatos Venetian Orchestra plays from a gondola on the river. Dinner was served to the accompaniment of Jack Hylton’s Riviera Band”, according to the Surrey Comet of 30 June 1928.

 

However, Cyril, who had paid Messrs Kent (the freeholders) £5,000 for the lease plus £500 a year rent, had already been £7,000 in debt before he bought the lease. The income he got from the hotel wasn’t nearly enough to repay his debts, pay the freeholder, or settle the bills of his suppliers. He went bankrupt in January 1929.

 

In 1930 it was bought by Alfred (A.E.) Bundy—a Great War veteran and 1920s film producer—and it reopened in May. By this time its telephone number had changed to Molesey 1421. A 1933 brochure for the hotel described Bundy as “a well-known London businessman”. Prices for single rooms were 20/- per person, and doubles 17/6 per person; lunch 4/-, tea 1/6 and dinner 7/6.

 

Then it was bought by Sir Charles Clore (1904-1979) in 1935, and renamed The Casino Hotel. He refurbished it again after the Second World War.

 

The hotel lease was sold by Taggs Island Properties Ltd in 1940 to William Hurlock, Managing Director of AC Cars. He bought the freehold of the island from Mr W.C. Kent in 1941.

Advertisement for the Palm Beach Hotel in the Surrey Comet, 29 May 1926

Reopened with a new owner—ad in the Surrey Comet, 3 May 1930

In 1965 it was sold to an Indian tycoon called Ramsawak Doon Pandit, but he turned out to have been a GPO telephone engineer instead, and had no money for improvements or redevelopment. Almost as soon as he took over the Bailey bridge collapsed. It was replaced by a single-arched bridge but with two wooden supports. It was so close to Hucks’ Boatyard (the Swiss Chalet) that the owner threatened litigation because it made access to the boatyard so difficult.

 

In 1966 the hotel held discos and concerts, like Twickenham’s Eel Pie Hotel.

 

In 1968 it was sold by Mr E.S. Prestwick to “an American businessman”, Dr Leon Joseph Bronesky. He had plans for a new hotel with 180 rooms—four or five storeys and 400 feet long, later reduced to 160 rooms.

 

In 1970 the old hotel featured in a scene from the Stanley Kubrik film, Clockwork Orange, where Alex and his droogs ambushed and routed Billy Boy’s gang.

 

On 14 March 1971 Bronesky organised a farewell lunch at the hotel, attended by Roy Hudd, Jimmie Jewell, Beryl Reid, Roy Kinnear, Ethel Revnell, Bill Oddie, Tim Brooke-Taylor, Graeme Garden, Graham Chapman and Eric Idle. After lunch they watched demolition men pull down the front of the hotel. Demolition was complete by 4 June 1971.

 

By this stage there was a plan for a new 244 bedroom hotel– called the Royal Hampton Hall Hotel—with a marina, swimming pool, squash courts and tennis courts. But this got nowhere. A third proposal in 1974 for a development of 138 homes was rejected by the council.

 

At this stage Mr Bronesky disappeared—to South America according to local newspapers—and was declared bankrupt in his absence (a Leon Joseph Bronesky, of Pompano Beach, Florida, died aged 74 in December 2000 in Florence, Kentucky.)

 

The company that had lent him money for the developments,  Clarebrooke Holdings, then came up with a plan in 1975 for 81 homes, a restaurant and a pub. Then in December 1976 they reduced the plan to 44 homes with no pub, restaurant or sports facilities.

 

The new bridge obviously wasn’t strong enough, because in January 1978 the council banned cars from using it.

 

All these plans ping-ponged back and forth for 15 years as Esher or Richmond Councils or the GLC favoured or objected to the proposals, developers went bust or missing, and houseboat owners fretted.

 

And finally the Department of the Environment rejected the latest development proposals in May 1978 because the site was so important, being close to Hampton Court.

 

Claremont, who were about to sell to Richmond Council, then sold to one of the houseboat owners in August 1979. He then sold it to a company set up by other houseboat owners in November 1979. After yet more struggles with the council, they managed to get a new bridge built in 1982, about 80 metres upstream of the previous bridge. In 1983 the island was redeveloped as a houseboat community, and a lagoon was created in the middle of the island.

 

The island now has more than 60 houseboats.

Here’s a nice email from Mr Mitchell…

 

Writing a quick note from Albany, Western Australia.

 

I used to live in Palace Road, Molesey, overlooking the Casino. As a teenager I remember the Casino going up in flames. I think that was in 1961.

 

It was certainly very badly damaged and I recollect a number of years later seeing a documentary TV programme hosted by Tommy Steele, the singer, who took you through the still wrecked Casino.

 

Prior to the fire we had Sunday lunches on special occasions in the Casino restaurant which was elevated with superb views and first class meals.

Here’s a nice email from Mr A.E. Bundy’s youngest child, Gloria…

 

Most interested in your Tagg’s Island story. I was the youngest child of A.E. Bundy and am the only one of his children still surviving.

 

Though very young at the time I have some dim memories of visits to The Thames Riviera Hotel which he owned for a few years from 1930 before going bankrupt.

 

I still have a chair from one of the bedrooms. I seem to remember various items came to us as a result of the sale.

 

It was often foggy when we drove to the Hotel (from Northwood) and the car had to proceed at a snail’s pace to the old ferry which used to chug sideways on chains across the river and there were anxious moments when the car had to drive off across a gap!

 

Of the building I remember little except for the steps to the entrance and the entrance hall with potted palms. There was a cellar said to have rats in it. And a sort of caretaker/watchman called Henry. Bathing in the river was a novelty and I remember the peculiar flat taste of the water and the slippery gravelly bottom under my feet.

 

My father was indeed a London businessman and had film interests. I believe he started Gaumont-British Instructional. My eldest brother, A. Frank Bundy, was in film production all his life.

 

I was also interested in Oswald Moseley’s connection with the island as father was a great admirer! Also of Hitler which amuses me now but in the run-up to WW2 it was deeply embarrassing! He had become very right-wing after the Great War and felt Germany had been badly treated by the Treaty of Versailles (many others felt the same). He left a war diary of his experiences of the Somme and later Salonika which is admired and quoted. He seemed a remote and enigmatic character to me.

 

Hope these memories are of interest.